Monday 14 December 2009

News on Iran

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Fed Up With Water Patrols

The Revolutionary Guard that patrol the waters of Iran are suffering from severe sleep disorders, homesickness and anxiety due to the constant influx of foreign ships into their territory.

One told our reporter: “I haven’t seen my family in six months due to the stream of ocean liners, ferries and military vessels straying into our territory. Some of us haven’t slept in months.”

But it’s getting worse for the patrolmen. Last month 400 canoeists went astray as one of the guards explains: “I’d finally managed to get off one night having had two weeks of restlessness when I heard paddles in the water outside one of our boats. They were making the now all too familiar sound of paddles frantically trying to turn canoes around before crossing the special line we have written on the water.”

We all looked at each other and said: “Great, another night’s slumber wrecked” and proceeded outside to the all too familiar sight of canoes spinning around and grown men flapping around in the sea having attempted to jump free of their canoes.”

“What’s more,” he added, “we rescued them from the sea, took them back for some routine questioning, dressed them up in little suits, fed them, gave them tabs and as soon as they got back to Britain they said we were a bunch of cunts!”

But the problem continues when the guards eventually get home as one told us: “Whenever I’m in my house asleep I have terrible nightmares whenever someone flushes the toilet or makes ship or watery type noises. I immediately wake up and look outside my house expecting to see ten huge fucking cruise liners trying to get into my front door.”

It’s also playing havoc with the guards’ sex-life when they eventually get home as well. As one pointed out: “Whenever I’m on the job, with my wife, I have to stop and check there isn’t a yacht with one of those pointy fronts about to go steaming up my arse.”

Guard spokesman Fred Johnstone said: “It’s now become an all too familiar sight, watching flotillas of ships crossing into our waters with not so much as a bye or leave. Only the other day six Dover to Calais ferries managed to take a wrong turning at the Bay of Biscay or something and were found wandering into Iranian sea space.”

Deputy Iranian guard spokesman Harold Mainwaring said: “It was your worst nightmare. All the passengers got off their fat arses expecting a cheap day out in France, to find themselves being taken to Tehran for routine questioning. The worst thing was we gave them food, suits and tabs, sent them home, and then they said we were a bunch of cunts.”

One Iranian Revolutionary guard, John Franks from Tehran, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “I didn’t sign up for this.” We asked the Royal Yachting Association and the ferry companies for their comments but they declined to go on record. We did however get a source from the Royal Navy to go on record. Admiral Baxter, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: “To be perfectly frank, we haven’t a fucking clue where we are most of the time. Sometimes the sea looks exactly like the sky so you feel sick. Then somebody shouts starboard off the bow or something and the ship starts moving so you feel sick again. It’s a fucking nightmare. Then someone shouts ‘Land ahoy!’ and next thing you know you are in Tehran and being dressed in a new suit and smoking tabs. I really didn’t sign up for this.”

Monday 14 September 2009

Madness and Civilisation

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2009/2679437.htm

Excellent interview here with Justin Clemens talking about the 50th anniversary of Madness and Civilisation. Though I'm not sure that year is correct?!?!

Good to hear they actually talk sense on the radio in Australia unlike here with our fucking let's not talk about difficult concepts in case we get embarrassed mentality.

Relating to this the City Journal went in hard on Foucault here http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2009/08/prison-chomsky-foucault in a fitful attempt to mould him like the philosopher's Papillon. A conceptual escapee. It's a lousy intro if nothing more, but not an appealing piece nonetheless.

Saturday 25 July 2009

So it has come to this.

But, really. What on earth are they playing at?

Israel has every right to feel like cornered tigers. And I would, if I were them, but they are now calling their own soldiers liars. They are using ancient methods of propaganda control within a chain of command and dismissing genuine concerns at the front line.

They may as well execute the men and women from their own services experiencing "shell-shock"and label it as cowardice.

Sunday 28 June 2009

Michael Jackson and the Jeffersons episode

This will get taken down by Viacom as quick as a flash but it is apposite.

In classic South Park fashion they blitz MJ but then warm the edge of their satire by targeting the police, racists and more or less anyone else who wanders into their fair portrayal of a troubled man.

He's not the Messiah he's just a very naughty boy (with apologies to Monty Python!)













After reading this and in particular the picture from the pastiche of the Last Supper, I was reminded of the above from Rock Dreams. The caption was "You were the king and we were at your crowning".

Friday 12 June 2009

You show me yours and I'll show you mine.

Excellent expansion on their previous rant by Infinite Thought called the trouble with philosophy continued.

It is two-fold. The seizing of continental philosophy by a kind of adolescent thought which then games out into an Oedipal scenario, and the dismissal of the real by the observer so entrenched in their examination, their view, they have lost all sight of its tangibility.

And it is a problem that Nietzsche, Foucault and Deleuze grappled with but Baudrillard and Derrida dismissed. The daddy-mentor-slave-master dilemma. Or, that the disciple is not the conduit to truth but a slave in the discourse. And there is nothing more annoying than a shutting down of a debate with, to quote John Searle:

“With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, “He says so and so,” he always says, “You misunderstood me.” But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, “What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.”

I recall vividly a discussion I had as a teenager with an Hegelian disciple who when I began to discuss Foucault would dismiss him along the lines of: “Foucault says nothing that is not in Hegel.” Which is a discussion of real importance but it makes the Hegelian disciple appear as a kind of parvenu. Because in a sense they are literally and figuratively letting themselves down and the whole school down. (And I’m acutely aware of the irony of my attempt to extricate myself from the mentor/pupil relationship by defending Foucault by the way!)

Infinite thought says: “I'm sure that people in much more serious physical trouble - heavy addiction, sickness exacerbated by poverty, those who have suffered bodily abuse - are unlikely to celebrate their oh-so-exciting degradation and would probably prefer access to free, high-quality healthcare. There is something horrible, truly horrible, about people who have access to clean water, enough food and adequate shelter celebrating 'the rot of the flesh' and 'contamination' as if it were sexy. Go and lick open wounds and tube seats if you think it constitutes an interesting philosophical position”.

Which is spot on. Cultural Theory particularly in the USA say 10 years ago was awash with the analysis on the aesthetics of the body. And it’s frightening because it disassociates itself from a body that sickens and dies.

I am utterly enthralled by Baudrillard’s work and in many ways he did have the last word on a whole host of problems in Foucault’s work. But because he was so disengaged, the elements of care and kindness in Foucault’s life and work remained elusive.

As Infinite thought summarises:

“If we are interested in an idea, or many ideas at once, can we simply pursue these interests (whilst acknowledging what it means to do so) without becoming petty about it? Without reducing it to a choice (which is no choice at all) between top trumps or private property..."

Wednesday 10 June 2009

A Review Of Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch

This is an abridged version of a longer piece I have written, but this version will be appearing in the Socialist Worker newspaper next week in the commentary section.


Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch

In 2003 the political commentator David Aaronovitch wrote these words on his position over the Iraq war: "If nothing is eventually found, I - as a supporter of the war - will never believe another thing that I am told by our government or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere. They probably are."

This neatly summarises the genuine, fundamental, fear people have of an official position given to them by their government. Are we being told the truth? Sometimes this is over potentially laughable issues; UFO’s and so on. But, when the stakes are high, as they are in a decision to go to war, the official position becomes of the gravest importance. Which is why it is so ironic that David Aaronovitch’s “Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History” sometimes feels like a cover-up in itself.

He hosts the book, rather like a proprietor of a freak show, beckoning his punters in with the right blend of empathy and condemnation; pained by the monstrosities he displays, but equally factual as he describes conspiracy theorists’ grotesque failure to resemble reality and nudging, winking, at our need to share in his view of the stereotypical theorist.

Guiding us through familiar but nevertheless interesting territory; Zionist conspiracies, Diana and MI5, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, 9/11, he quite accurately displays the sloppy twisted reasoning and tunnel-vision research that is so often the backbone of many of these theories.

And it is a point well made in many respects. The 9/11 truth campaign is awash with demented scenarios. Some literally believe that Mossad were controlling the planes with a remote control or that the hijackers were on the Rumsfeld pay roll, or that the CIA hijacked the third plane and its inhabitants were taken to a secret destination and were then executed... ad nauseum. But that’s why conspiracy theorists are too soft a target and to tarnish them all with the same brush makes it impossible to distinguish between their two distinct types.

The first type, that probably has no effect in shaping history other than to sell books or films (fake moon landings, Christ’s bloodline) are significantly different from the second (9/11 and 7/7 truthers for example). Because the first type, that would have us believe the Lochness monster fired the shot behind the grassy knoll, is a different breed to the second that, however mistaken in its conclusions, is desperately trying to legitimately question a version of events.

What’s equally frustrating is that he has missed a great opportunity here. A better book would have analysed the JFK assassination as the template for all great conspiracy theories, with its heady blend of secrecy, power, a nation devastated, combined with the media anatomy of an event; who shot from where, who paid who, and then examining how it was all, literally, framed by the Zapruder film which is now the “last witness” as it were, and used by both parties as a corroboration of the Oswald theory or a denial.

Because it is the way that the JFK conspiracy theory transpired, that set the pattern for the methods of the others. A good example is “Loose Change”, the film that is the canon of 9/11 conspiracists, as it borrows hugely from the form of the JFK one. The CNN film is the Zapruder film and for unaccounted buildings disappearing, read puffs of smoke behind the grassy knoll. What is inherent in the irritation that many feel on the left is that when addressing 9/11 the truthers have succumbed to ideas, exotically alluring and, in supposedly unmasking a cover-up, they actually allow the real cover-up to go unchecked.

The real story of 9/11 is a tale of US foreign policy backfiring, with its roots in British and American involvement in the Middle East for hundreds of years. Depending on where one starts. But then in their attempt to challenge the Neocons, the truth movement merely plays into their hands. It creates a canny diversion from answering the question that the families of the dead are so needy for.

At the end of the book Aaronovitch arrives at this conclusion: “If the preceding chapters have demonstrated anything, it must be that conspiracy theories originate and are largely circulated among the educated and the middle-class”.
This is palpably untrue. Conspiracy theories are driven by society as a whole; gossiping tabloids, cloak and dagger civil servants, the inquisitive. It is not a chattering elite trying to fool the working-class into believing something that does not exist.

At its best it is a kind of “Conspiracy Theory for Dummies” and Aaronovitch is certainly no hack and there is definitely a genuine grappling with the whole subject of truth and history. But, at worst, its central thesis - that paranoia shapes the theorists - is flawed and he can’t help but suppress a giggle. And the irony of this scoffing is that, in the light of his own unrepentant taking to task of certain elements of the socialist press who questioned the need to go to war in Iraq, he ascribes paranoia upon the minds that realised from day one the government were lying to us.

This is the idea that eludes him, and the book. 9/11 and 7/7 truthers are not privy to a hidden truth or insane but are merely desperate to bring accountability to governments that they correctly perceive as revelling in an unpalatable art of deception. That the UK is entering a new low in distrust of parliamentary democracy and New Labour are being found out, as we speak, is testimony to the root cause of conspiracy theory.

Aaronovitchs’s book, in attempting to expose the mind of the conspiracy theorist, is nothing more than a perfect mirror for the methods they use. Which is particularly galling because he is trying to obfuscate his own complicity in accepting an official lie by deflecting blame on others.

Friday 5 June 2009

Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle

All South Park Foucauldians should check out the infinite thought blog as it's pretty much an incredible resource for all us post-cultural studies fumblers. I'm busy knocking out a blast for the SWP on Aaronovitch's Voodoo Histories book at the moment so won't be posting for a bit.

Thursday 4 June 2009

Forget Foucault?

There's something odd about this http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-spirit-of-terrorism.html Firstly it's parochial. World Cup in France, Diana dying in France. Then the events strike - then 9/11 and I think back to Forget Foucault and the slaughtering Baudrillard gave to the History of Sexuality and I'm paraphrasing because I flogged FF on amazon: "a prose that floats so beautifully above its theory" and it does; it's measured and historical but is Baudrillard not equally guilty in the spirit of Terrorism. I know he made amends in Forget Baud but why was Fouc such a target. Derrida's blast at Madness and Civilization was understandable because he was trapped in the mentor/student relationship with all its Nietzchean context as demonstrated in Deleuze's work. But it's fascinating that so much of the polemics focused on Foucault's work. (I know there were academic differences and Virillio basically said that Discipline and Punish was a rip-off of one of his MA pupils thesis!)
Sorry for the rant but I don't think he gets any justice and neither does Bataille but that's a rant for another day.

Saturday 30 May 2009

Voodoo histories

"Treason doth never prosper," wrote an English poet. "What's the reason?" "For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

The above quote from the Oliver Stone film JFK describes eloquently the problematics involved in empiricism and its relation to conspiracy theory. It also describes a simple version of story-telling and viewpoint, and if we succumb to relativism then we are lost. The "conspiracy theory" has to serve the empiricist (a term I do not take lightly but is useful) as it reaffirms his version of history or reality. The conquest of monotheism fought a bloody battle to prove there was only one God, not many, and that drove the formation of modern deity, religion. God (in His creative capacity and law giving relationship with power) became manifest. Literally and a potent political force. The unification of Judaism in Israel was a coalition of Gods into one.

Which is a round-about way of appraising Voodoo Histories - David Aaaronovitch's new book. It's the thinking man's conspiracy theory basher, the usual targets are here - JFK, Diana, Christ (for Christ's sake!), the always odd Zionist conspiracy and so on and you are left with the blinding conclusion that DA NC, generally left-thinking men who backed the wrong horse are creating a set of CT nutjob strawman to deflect their own embarrassment re calls on the invasion of Iraq and the perpetually self-satisfying toxicity that fueled the Euston Manifesto whilst averting its evident scapegoating.

All that said, Aaronovitch is genuinely interested in sources and evaluating them .......The "truth" behind JFK's death can never be solved but as the par excellence of conspiracy theories it should not be circled in by the vultures ready to seize its form ("Loose Change" brigade) nor be tarnished, as a whole, by virtue of its "conspiracy theory" nature. Oh, what the hell watch..."Mystery of the Urinal Deuce here, to your right, when you hit this http://allsp.com/s.php?season=10

Monday 27 April 2009

A friend at the Times

The Times seem to enjoy their SP stories. The picked up on this last year and now this one following the budget . A small pic of the Gordon Brown moment appeared on the front page but maybe they picked it up from the Telegraph .

What da fuck is going on? Come to mention it, it was all over the wires, but front page of the Times! "Viewers of the animated comedy South Park saw Gordon Brown wreak nuclear war upon Finland last night, as punishment for scuppering his plot to solve the global economic downturn by stealing money from aliens. The episode, screened on the Comedy Central channel, was produced before the Budget announcement."

It was screened 10.00pm EST, so 3am Thursday morning GMT. Which means all you naughty file sharers in the UK were watching it at 4amish; about the time Alistair Darling woke up sweating and dreaming of a large red package in his hand. Etc etc. More to come! Plus I finally take the Marxist literary theory for dummies piece in Taking SP Seriously and Fingerbang has a half-time report on season 13. Doesn't look good I'm afraid.

Monday 16 February 2009

Cynic

Just going through the book "Taking SP Seriously" and it's an excellent read. I'm going to post a longer thing on one of the chapters but I have to take quick issue (Dude? ed) on a chapter called something like "Postideological half measures and cynicism", sorry, I don't have the book to hand. It's a Marxist analysis of SP and the thrust of the argument is that SP by appearing to be ambivalent on politics allows the "South Park Viewer" to disengage from political action.